The website Newspapers.com now offers subscribers the opportunity to take a step back in time and revisit the events that have shaped communities across Evangeline Parish while peering through decades of Ville Platte Gazette articles.
The task of making the more than 100 years of Gazette newspapers accessible to the public was made possible through an agreement Louisiana State Newspapers entered into with Newspapers.com to give access to newspapers not in the public domain.
Newspapers.com received all editions of the Gazette from the Louisiana State Library System, which Louisiana State Newspapers Production Manager Tom Coleman said has “dutifully archived each and every edition on microfilm.”
Today, PDF versions of the newspaper pages are sent to LSU, which then changes the newspaper from a PDF file to microfilm.
Coleman said the microfilm is “kept in a secure climate control environment with limited access in the bowels of the university.”
Microfilm is used to preserve the newspaper because Coleman said it is “readable by many different methods while digital format may or may not survive the next century.”
To view the history printed throughout the pages of past Gazette’s, visit Newspapers.com and subscribe for a small fee. After completing the sign-up process, every LSN newspaper can be viewed by visiting the newspapers website, scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking on microfilm archives.
To view past editions of the Ville Platte Gazette, visit evangelinetoday.com.
Newspapers may also be viewed by typing the name of the newspaper in the search bar on Newspapers.com.
LSN newspapers that can be viewed stretch across Louisiana and include but are not limited to, the Ville Platte Gazette, the Basile Weekly, the Acadian Press, the Eunice News, the Oakdale Journal, the Kinder Courier, the Crowley Post-Signal, the Church Point News, the Rayne Acadian-Tribune, the Abbeville Meridional, and more.
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ELIZABETH WEST Managing Editor